


that's the only reason it should hurt

by transversely



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: BDSM themes, Consensual Violence, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-12
Updated: 2013-11-12
Packaged: 2018-01-01 06:45:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1041614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/transversely/pseuds/transversely
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I certainly can’t shift,” she says. The pace of her fingertip tracing and redrawing his lifeline hasn’t changed at all, but suddenly he’s aware of how close his hand is to her mouth. “But you can.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	that's the only reason it should hurt

**Author's Note:**

> Trashy PWP for tumblr user nigiris, containing consensual violence, BDSM themes, and manga spoilers. Enjoy!

  


 

 

 

~

 

 

 

 

“—but it takes me a while to kind of recover, it’s a long—Ms. Hanji calls it a  _refractory period_. Like with sexual activity. Except it’s about how long it takes for me to be able to shift again. That’s what we call it—shift. You know, like changing the setting on your gear.” 

She ignores the term so thoroughly she might as well already know it. He guesses she knows a lot of things. “Sexual activity.”

“Yeah, you know, the part where—“

“Yeah, shockingly, I think I might have a faint inkling, I just haven’t heard anyone refer to it as  _sexual activity_ before.”

“Well, that’s what it  _is._ What would you call it?” He thinks about it. “What  _do_ you call it? You usually just—“ He makes a vague, expansive gesture. “—kind of…grab—“

“I don’t know, Eren. I’m sure I’d think of something more delicate. You should be more modest about referring to that in my presence. You should be considerate. You—”

“Does that mean yesterday, I shouldn’t have—“

“No. No, it doesn’t.”

He thinks about it. “Oh—that’s all right then.”

“Well, I’m so grateful my opinion has Scout Jaeger’s stamp of approval. Maybe you should have been the policeman. You could take my handcuffs out for a trial run.” She hooks a thumb into the handcuffs at her belt, her finger completing the light curve intuitively, as though she’s stopping herself from sliding her own hand in. Catching herself in her own weaponry, and in what’s by now old inculcated habit his own finger echoes the motion on the porcelain handle of his teacup. “How’s that for  _sexual activity_?”

“Shut  _up_ , that’s  _not_ what I—can I see them, though? Not for that. Just to hold ‘em. Even  _you_ have to admit they’re cool! Hey, if some perp tried to make a run for it, you think you, you think you could concuss them without cracking their head open? If you got a little momentum going.”

She considers it. He looks at her, thinks that he could ask her what the handcuffs were made of, who might have had them before her, what kind of flowers the florist down the street sells every morning, how often it rains in Stohess, whether she carries a satchel or a basket to the baker’s, what she likes to buy, what the best way is to eat it, and she’d consider it. “You’d have to test it to be able to replicate that kind of torque every time. We could try on you, maybe. With this new healing ability of yours.”

“Yeah! That would be—wait, you’re making fun of me! You’re  _definitely_ making fun of me! And anyway I’d—I wanted you to help me with that, you know. I mean, it’s not like you’d know any better than Ms. Hanji, or anyone else, but—I thought you’d like to try it out. Since it’s because of you I could fight like that, you know. At Trost.”

She has her teacup in a full-palmed grasp, like she doesn’t mind it if she burns her fingers. It’s the way he used to hold it when he was very young and when he thinks of it he feels warm like the porcelain in her hands, held close in that small domestic heat. The sunlight is gently gossamer on her shoulders in the expensive new jacket, and it’s unfamiliar enough that he feels compelled to look at her more than he usually does, trying to resolve the discrepancy. Sunlight in her windows, pre-fall, older than anything he’s ever seen, reminding him of the thick plate in the only magnifying glass he’d seen in Shiganshina. Sloping bottle-green glass watered down with the light, flecks of rust swimming in the depression, ostensible obscurity  but oddly through it the world was more clear anyway.

She says, “Drink your tea. It cost ever so much, Eren. I’m trying my best to be a gracious hostess, don’t insult my hospitality.”

The light’s different here, in Sina, or possibly just different in her room, through the windows. He cups his teacup the same way she does, feeling the new heat of his palm soak up the little burn. It’s strange to be in the same space as her with nowhere else to go. He’s gotten into the habit of measuring his time with her in the time allotted hand-to-hand: forty-five minute sessions.

He decides he likes it. He lets the sight of her fill him up like the sunlight through the old, lovely windows; he drinks his tea. Outside in the street, the clack of spurs on cobblestone sounds like ringing glass.

 

 

 

 

~

 

 

 

 

When Annie wants his buckles undone she never does it herself, only tugs and strokes and nips at the cloth around them, acknowledging but not indulging the hot skin underneath, until he has to push her back and snap them open himself. She slings herself back against her headboard and watches him. A slice of crescent-shaped lantern light burns on her bare shoulder and he thinks wildly that there’s something very indecent about this but before he can articulate what she’s got her hand on his chest harness again, running her fingers under the belt the way she’d slit an envelope open. His shirt feels like it’s not there and at the same time like it’s  _too_ there, all that fabric in the way between his chest and the pointed, curious glide of her hand. There’s never been a difference between the first and after times, with Annie. The same deliberate wonderment in her touch every time. “Stop  _doing_ that,” he says, “hang on a second, let me—“ 

She slides her hand all the way under the chest harness and suddenly twists it sharply, garroting it tight over his heart. He gasps and she shifts positions, suspending him over the edge of the bed and shoving hard so when she lets go he falls; it’s an obvious move, he has his hands out to break it before he hits the ground. He grabs for her ankles but she sidesteps his hands as nimbly as a dancer (“—close your  _fingers!_ strike, don’t grab, or break them, if you want, you can afford it now— _”_ )and goes for his solar plexus with her heel instead. He ducks to the side and lets his shoulder take it, her pistonlike follow-through; he feels it in his spine and his chest and his shoulderblade, her total concentration, her interest. Stepladder jolts of pleasure pooling in the fading bruises on his chest. As wellness floods back into him he opens his fingers again, this time deliberately, and wraps them around her bare ankle.

“Aren’t you listening to me, Eren? That was a good roll, but I might become insecure at how your habits are just.  _Deteriorating_. Close your fingers.”

“You have feet,” he says stupidly.

She cants her hip, twisting to look down at him without any real aggression, and he can feel the tremor of her body through the slim pulse in her ankle. “That’s true.”

She doesn’t sound surprised. His hand on her bare ankle feels crazily intimate; she must know what he means. Her hair around her face haloes her, filamenting white at the edges. It’s impossibly endearing, somehow. That she usually manages to look so neat with hair like that.

“I mean—without your boots, it’s—I’ve seen some feet.  _Yours_ are pretty nice feet.“

“Surprise,” she says, and runs her foot over the belt buckle on his chest, still a little tight. He loosens his grip and she stays like that, hands fisted at her sides, eyes blue slivers luminous in the streetlamp glow from her windows as she points her toe delicately, the way she might step into a bath. She rucks up his shirt, traces the ball of her foot over his hip pockets, smiles when she finds what she’s looking for. “ _Pretty_  nice, I’ve got  _very_ nice feet, apparently. How charming. I’ve never known that about myself, Eren. This might be something that could work on girls, should you ever feel inclined to talk to them—“

He grits his teeth as she toes the straining zipper over his erection. She flicks the button with her toenail, runs the arch of her foot all along the shaft, that perfect pressure; she’s known, since the first day he met her, how much he can take. She drops onto the floor, knees on either side of his chest, and slips two fingers under the chest buckle to undo it. He breathes deeply with the instant relief. The raised grain of her floor feels pleasant and insistent against his back like sunlight on the back of his neck after being thrown, and— 

“Could you come out there sometime?” he blurts. “You could help me figure out stuff, maybe.”

“Why?” It feels like a chore to talk, so he knows she wants him to. He hooks a hand over hers, the join of his thumb cupping the knob of bone at her wrist, and she tilts her head assessing it. He has the sudden idea that she can see the bruised skin, though there’s no way she can; it’s so dark, and the bruises are long gone anyway, now only sense memory. “You have a whole squad of honorable scouts at your disposal to help you manage it. Very helpful. What do they do anyway, truss you up? Feed you tranquilizers through bars?”

There’s a sharp tinge in her voice, venom renewing itself. Blood welling up from his bitten hand. He pushes himself up on one elbow and clumsily pulls her in closer, kissing her like a question or as if he can touch whatever it is she gets her distaste from. She gets him back against the bed and works his mouth open, deliberately combative, tongue against his and teeth on his bottom lip and the wet silken inside of her mouth, close and private as the warm thrilling summer dark of the room. He keeps his eyes open until she closes them with the pads of her thumbs, and as she kisses him he’s aware of the light pressure, how easy it would be for her to blind him, how easy it is to keep still for her knowing she won’t. It’s natural to be here: in her room, in the dark, her hands showing him where to go. Her body curved up over his in a way he can feel in miniature on the nape of her neck, a protective parenthesis but there’s no safety there, their tongues sliding, the hands cupping his hipbones insistent in a way that always belies her studious casualness. He pulls back and wipes his mouth, feeling steamrolled.

“Whatever, didn’t you  _always_ use to be on about how I needed to learn how to use my strength?”

“You act like it was years ago.”

It doesn’t feel right to say it feels like it was, not in the dark private mystery of the room, something he’s never associated with her before. He’s only ever seen her backlit by sunlight. But he likes it: in the darkness she’s all physical presence. He doesn’t know what to do with his hand so he grabs her shirt at her shoulder, where it’s skewed to the side. The crescent of lantern light slices into his hand; he watches his skin take up the same brightness. “I’m not—done. You should show me a lot. We could figure out—”

“Could we? Right now?”

“You—what?”

She lets go of his shirt and takes his hand. It’s not a manuever—hands are useless, she’s told him. You don’t get anywhere with your hands. Until now, anyway. She turns his palm over and looks down at it, a lock of her hair pooling in the depression, brushing his lifeline, which she covers with one finger. Her hands are small enough that her index finger isn’t quite enough.

“Annie—“

“I certainly can’t shift,” she says. The pace of her fingertip tracing and redrawing his lifeline hasn’t changed at all, but suddenly he’s aware of how close his hand is to her mouth. It’s—he sucks his bottom lip between his teeth. “But you can.”

“ _Right here_? No way, I’d—you’d wreck your house. Your roommate would  _kill_ you.  _I’d_ kill you! If I turned into a—it’s not funny, stop looking like that. I’m being serious!“ He balls his hand into a fist.

She draws back so she’s straddling his thighs and leans forward. Her other hand slips between his legs and he tenses up at the lightness of the contact—just resting there, just casual.

“So am I.”

Her thumb keeps stroking against the meat of his palm, deliberate and insistent and metronomic until he opens his fist. He doesn’t realize he’s bucking his hips up in response to the motion until her other hand splays open, covering his erection but not giving him the slightest pressure. With her arm outstretched and hand flat against his cock she looks like she’s asking him to stop, mandating the holding back she’s never asked for and something about it is angering so he grabs her hand, trying to force the friction he wants; she’s stronger, and resists it easily. “ _Annie_ —hey, that’s not—“

“Why? You asked me to help you,” she says. As she says ‘help’ she turns her head, opening her mouth into his hand so he can feel her breath against his palm, just as he feels his own in the moments before biting down. His eyes widen and he tries to look away but she’s watching him, she knows he’s interested. She opens her mouth again. Lets him feel her tongue, scoring across his palm a small tingle of wet electricity, and he looks away, muffling a curse into his own shoulder.  

“Don’t you  _dare—_ “

“Bite your hand?” she says. “Is that how you injure yourself?”

“I—how do  _you_ know I—“ She snaps the button on his pants, easing them down, running her thumb inside his waistband, along the jut of one hipbone. “H-hey—“

“You’re obvious,” she says, “you’re  _so obvious_ , Eren, of course that’s what you’d do, of course,” he’s hopelessly hard under her practiced one-handed grip, her thumb slipping in the groove at the tip, wet with precome, straining and wanting and so ready for her he’d do anything, would wait for hours, would stay still for her, would let her do what she wanted with him because that’s always  _worked_. She thumbs the head of his cock gently, casually, a wet half-moon motion with the pad of her thumb, not distracting him from her hand at her mouth despite the fact that it’s—obviously going to—

“What else w-would I—it’s easy, that’s the thing, it’s— _nngn—_ “

She licks into the little web between his thumb and index finger and when he groans does it again, more deliberate this time, each little tender hollow of skin between each finger and the next victim to her probing tongue. “You’re interested in doing what’s easy now?” 

There’s so much thoroughness to it, until he’s squirming under her mouth, gritting his teeth, incensed because he hasn’t thought of it this way, the softness, the indulgence, it’s just always been pain _._ But here she is, always the teacher, intent on showing him something he likes again and again until he understands why it gets that reaction out of him, and like a signal flare diffusing under his chest the feeling spreads, the heat of her mouth, the contained warmth between his legs, the knowing building sensation of how goodit’d feel to let her do it, bite down now, after she’s prepared him like that, stretching him out taut and waiting, splayed out from ankles to fingertips with his shoulders straining back against her bed hard enough to take up the imprints of the little nails and joins of the planks. His hand feels limp in hers where she holds it to her mouth and she lets him have a bit of teeth now, a gentle, almost accidental edge to the sweetness, at the same time closing her hand around his cock and giving him a few langorous strokes. Slipping and slippery, alternatingly too much pressure and nowhere near enough. It goes straight to his temples and in the rush of blood he lets his head fall back, grabs at her shirt with his free hand, trying to get her closer, wanting her to stay away, wanting to feel her teeth again, that promise of harder pressure. Total indulgence giving way to power.

“ _Stop_ that—come on, let me—“

“Let you what? I’m giving you enough,” she says, running her palm all the way up and down his shaft as slowly as she can, hard but all details, thumbing the ridge under the head. Following the standing veins studiously until he could shout at her, rail, do anything but shut his eyes tighter and bite his own lip the way he wishes she’d do it. “Do you want something else? You don’t ask for what you want, Eren. Not everyone is going to be able to guess—” like me, she doesn’t say, but he hears it; it’s true, his cock twitches in her hands and she covers it languidly as she beats him off, sure-handed and sure-eyed and proving her own point on his body, always,  _always._

“I—oh  _fuck_ you, you  _can’t_ do this here, there isn’t room, it’s not the right time—“

“When is it going to be the right time?”

“ _You_ should know! Aren’t you always—the one who knows?” and it seems to make her happy, she’s easy in this regard, dips her head and lets him have an open-mouthed bite, nothing like the way he does it, nothing practical about it, lewd, sensual, teeth dragging across the sensitive hollow in his palm before sinking into the skin at the base of his finger and tugging, nipping, hitching on the skin with the same intimate pulsing rhythm. She moves forward into his lap now; he moves to pull her closer and she anticipates it, hooks her legs behind him and works their hips together efficiently, savagely, thumbs in his belt loops tugging him forward, showing him how his own rhythm helps him find the sweet spot. She pulls his wrecked shirt down, tugs and sucks at one of his nipples and then the other until he hisses and then she runs her tongue open-mouthed over the nubs, all pointed, parodic tenderness so that he’s kissing the underside of her jaw, totally unprepared, when she takes his hand again. She bites his fingers, and keeps working his cock, slow and steady and hard before loosening up, going lazy and indulgent and silkily sweet until his muscles have tightened to a tense, woven point and there’s a humming all along his calves and shoulders and stomach sheened with sweat. She gets him on edge, hanging on the precipice, teetering greedily on the shelf of anticipation just before he shifts but not able to go over, and when his pleading groans reach a peak she switches it off, her bites gentle on his palm as she interlaces their fingers, her hand hard and efficient as his own on his cock so he’s arcing his spine to get at her for more contact, fucking her hand, hips battering off the floorboards in confused want.

“Please,” he says, into her collarbone, “Annie,  _please_ —“

“Does it hurt?”

“No—n-no, it doesn’t hurt—I  _want_ it to, come on—“

“That’s the only reason it should,” she says, “will you remember that?”

“What are you—oh, come  _on_ —“

“The  _only_ reason. Remember it,” she insists, and lets go of his wrist to cup his cheek, forcing him to look at her own eyes, hazy with lust but always urgent, blue as lightning in the summer dark. “ _Remember_ that about it, it—say it—“

He’d say anything. “I’ll—yeah, whatever, just—“ and she bites then, hard but not hard enough but hard in a way that means it  _could_ be so easily, out in the sunlight under the sky, imagining the feeling of her teeth the last thing he feels before taking on the titan body. When he comes it’s easy, effortless, knocked out from under his own feet, scrabbling for purchase on her waist as it tears through him like the first time he’d shifted: that incoherent, outrageous rush of tingling heat, a humming joy so strong it could only have been inhuman, something unreal, something that wasn’t supposed to exist.

 

 

 

 

~

 

 

 

 

“Did you mean it, what you said? About helping me?” 

She’s pulling the flyaways back up into her bun. It’s a sharp, brisk wind in Stohess, imminent thunderstorming, heady enough to shake her hair loose. He helps her without thinking about it, chasing down the little locks of blonde hair. He rubs a little circle on the side of her throat when he finishes, because he can, and because he’s close enough for it, for a little longer. She lets him keep his hand there and doesn’t do anything but turn slightly to untwist her rifle strap from where it’s gone tangled over her shoulder.

“Obviously. Why, do you want it in writing? I’m very good at paperwork now. You doubt my word, Eren, is that it?”

“No,” he answers honestly.

He doesn’t even have to think about it but it comes out differently than he intended, like he’s struck a spoon on the side of a glass, a ringing, empty expectance in the aftermath. She looks blank in a way that means she wants  something more, but he doesn’t have anything for her and she always knows, anyway, so he looks away, into the grey sky at the horizon line. The curve of the wall shepherding them inside, away from the gathering clouds; he thinks of the echoing curve of her handcuffs on her belt.

“Anyway, you’re a shitty liar,” he says. This time she smiles.

They walk out into the main road. The wind has a slant to it, steepening with the scent of iron in the air, silvery snaps of late summer cold like afterimages, and yards above their heads he can see the faraway Reiss weathervane spinning dizzily on the rooftops, mapping out the haphazard season. It’s a strange setting for her, or for him, sharing her habit for taking up space, but here on the streets next to her, seeing what she sees, he welcomes the idea for the first time.

The world is very large, he thinks, and he feels like laughing.

“What’s the matter? Excited to get back to your daily grind? Action and adventure, it all sounds so exhilarating. I’m sure a delicate creature like myself wouldn’t have the constitution for it at all.”

“Bullshit. I’ll show you, you’ll—we’ll have fun. When we have that spar. I’ll  _trash_ you in your gear, you don’t even know. I’ve got moves now like you’ve never seen.”

“I know for a fact that that is an actual lie.”

“Well…yeah, they’re  _your_ moves. But they might as well be new, you know?”

“I know.”

“It’s—everything’s really new.” Not everything, she doesn’t say, but he hears it anyway. “So—when can I come back?”

She looks at his hand on the strap of his satchel. He thinks wildly that she’s going to take it, but she doesn’t, only hefts her rifle again, running her thumb over the base of her own hand. Unbroken, unbitten, so different from his. Still she knows. She’s smiling too now, eyes gently lidded, hair a-tangling again in the electric summer wind.

She says, “Next time, I’ll come for you.”

 

 

 

 

~

 

 

 

  _end_


End file.
